The firm Day CPM submitted a target budget of more than $112 million at Tuesday's budget meeting.

Ever have this dream? You’re a young student, you have all your schoolbooks, you’re ready for the first day of school. It is almost time for class. The first period bell is approaching, your classmates and teachers are waiting and then the alarm goes off, you have no idea where you’re supposed to be headed.

For students and families at the new Cannon Beach Academy, the anxiety is real, but can be resolved.

The Cannon Beach Children’s Center closed in April 2016. With a forecast of substantially higher construction costs director of startup operations Phil Simmons said the building at 3781 S. Hemlock is more suitable than the proposed Sunset Boulevard location, which previously housed a fitness center.

“We were going to outgrow the building on Sunset,” Simmons said this spring. “In the (former) children’s center, we can make this space work for the foreseeable future.”

The South Hemlock building would take fewer, if any, renovations because it already meets many of the school building code requirements, he said.

The site is larger, includes a playground and served effectively as a place for preschoolers for 39 years before its closing. The building estimate from Coaster Construction gave him a ballpark cost of $50,000 — a lot less than the cost of renovations on Sunset Boulevard, with a construction estimate of $240,000.

Being a stand-alone building also helps reduce cost, Simmons said, because fire code requirements in the last location were dependent on the fact the space shared walls with other retail businesses.

Since the city owns the property, the City Council must vote to give the city manager to go ahead with lease negotiations. The earliest the request can go before the Planning Commission for approval is June 22.

Ironically, the relocation of the academy could come at the expense of the co-existing goal of affordable housing. Only months after its closing in April, the city chose the site of the now-shuttered children’s center for a third possible workforce housing location, along with the Spruce Street parking lot and the RV Resort.

The former children’s center had a capacity of 36 students. At the time of its closing enrollment was 19, with six full time. The Cannon Beach Academy had until May 1 to enroll at least 17 kindergartners and 17 first- and second-graders combined. As of May 1, 18 kindergartners were enrolled and the first- and second-grade class has been maxed out with 22 students.

If councilors deny the property to the academy, or if the permitting and construction process doesn’t meet the fall deadline, students would enroll in the Seaside School District. This would place them exactly where they are today — and where hundreds of students enrolled at Gearhart Elementary School, Seaside High School and Broadway Middle School are now on short time in buildings considered well past their intended life span.

The average age of the three buildings is 65 years old, with a building life expectancy of 45 years, according to Seaside School District Superintendent Sheila Roley.

The schools not only sit in the tsunami zone but hold serious infrastructure problems in dire need of repair, renovation or demolition.

Campus construction is expected to be substantially complete by 2020, and will open for students in the fall of 2020.

In the more immediate future, Roley said she expects a construction manager-general contractor to be hired this month. Candidates were interviewed in May.

Considering how distant and even unlikely both the academy and the new campus seemed only a year ago, there is plenty of reason for optimism. The academy had been turned down twice before meeting its requirements to launch. And the district’s $99.7 million bond passage last November was anything but assured before its passage.

Brew pubs, fish and chips joints, even cannabis dispensaries will have little difficulty finding success in the city’s thriving tourist economy. Housing and education may face a more difficult path. As the district did to mobilize and expedite a new campus, let’s ramp up efforts to meet two of the city’s most critical needs, housing and education, to keep the backbone of the community strengthened for future generations. It’s not that we just need one or the other, we need both.

Residents, working families and committed volunteers recognize the vital need to provide a safe and welcoming environment for our children. While a hub for tourism, businesses can’t operate in a vacuum without a versatile labor pool, young workers and their families.

Time for us to lock in timelines to guarantee every student a seat in a classroom, and an opening date of September for those children ready to learn.

R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s South County reporter and editor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach Gazette.